alive with villains and weeping maidens. Halto! The window of the 5--and
10-cent store! a tumble of gewgaws and candies and kitchen utensils.
Christmas tree tinsel and salted peanuts, jazz music and mittens.

The curtain is up. Egad, what a masterly scene. A kitchen Coney Island. A
puzzle picture of isles, signs, smells, noises. Cinderella wandering
wistfully in the glass-bead section looking for a fairy godmother.

A clinking obbligato by the cash registers. The poor are buying gifts.
This garish froth of merchandise is the back ground of their luxuries.
This noisy puzzle-picture store is their horn of plenty. A sad thought and
we'll dismiss it. What we want is plot.

Perhaps the jazz-song booster singing out of the side of his mouth with
tired eyes leering at the crowd of girls: "Won't You Let Me Love You If I
Promise to Be Good?" And "Love Me, Turtle Dove." And "Lovin' Looie." And
"The Lovin' Blues."

All lovin'. Jazz songs, ballads, sad, silly, boobish nut songs--all about
love me--love me. All about stars and kisses, moonlight and "she took my
man away." There are telephones all over the walls and the song booster's
voice pops out over the salted-peanut section, over the safety-pin and
brassware section. A tinny, nasal voice with a whine and a hoarseness
almost hiding the words.

The cash registers clink, clink. "Are you waited on, madam? Five cents a
package, madam." The crowds, tired eyed, shabbily dressed, bundle-laden,
young, old--the crowds shuffle up and down, staring at gewgaws, and the
love-me love songs follow them around. Follow them to the loose-bead
counter where Madge with her Japanese puffs of hair, her wad of gum and